Can't Win For Losing
by element78
Summary: Five times Torchwood doesn't exactly save the world, and one time they do, more or less.


A series of quick little drabbles that turned into something of a monster.

Uh, lessee, warnings… warnings… General working knowledge of the first two seasons is assumed. Hints of CoE in number five, in which liberties were taken with the time line. That one went all angsty and dark on me. Sorry. Number four includes some attempted Gwen/Ianto- you'll see what I mean- and there's a bit of Jack/Owen in there somewhere if you so interpret it. Oh, and plenty of Janto, naturally.

Enjoy.

* * *

><p>1.<p>

Tosh got the call, and sent Owen in her place, since she had a headache and was hip-deep in projects besides. He figures he might even, one day, forgive her for it.

The street is deserted when he arrives, which is a Bad Sign. He pulls out his gun, just in case, and keeps close to the building as he rounds the corner to find—

"What the hell- Tosh!"

"What is it? I still can't see it," she says, no doubt cycling through the various CCTV camera angles. Owen sighs, steps away from the wall.

"It's a rabbit," he snaps, slipping his gun back into its holster as he approaches the creature. He doesn't get too close- you don't last long at Torchwood if you don't learn to respect a thing no matter what its appearance- but circles it warily, watching it watching him.

It's the size of a small house cat, and aside from its shocking lilac color, it looks exactly like an Earth rabbit. Its ears wilt a little bit and its nose twitches. Owen maintains his distance.

"A rabbit?" Gwen has now joined the conversation, and judging by her tone, is trying very hard not to laugh.

"I'm not kidding," Owen snaps irritably. "It's a bloody rabbit. A purple rabbit. Is this someone's idea of a joke?"

"Purple?" Jack says, before anyone can answer, and at his oh-shit tone Owen instantly freezes.

Before he can ask what's so bad about purple rabbits, the air in front of him explodes in flames.

"Holy _shit_!" Owen yells, leaping gracelessly backwards and landing flat on his back. He digs his heels into the ground and pushes himself back a little bit more.

"Owen! Jack, what was that?"

"Fire," Jack answers calmly. "Don't worry, they're not powerful to kill someone."

"The rabbit breathes fire?" Owen asks, calm and rational, his voice hitting a pitch he hasn't been able to reach since turning fifteen.

"Of course not," Jack scoffs, and just as Owen is sighing in relief, he continues. "They're pyrokinetic."

"… they're what?" Owen says, eyes on the rabbit. He hasn't gotten up yet, doesn't trust the thing to not overreact at the movement.

"They light fires with their minds," Jack answers in his speaking-to-idiots voice, as if this is obvious. Owen, who lives in a world where rabbits are brown or grey and have a tried-and-true defense of _run away_, finds this to actually be somewhat absurd.

"Oh, of course," he says darkly. "And what am I supposed to do about the pyrokinetic rabbit?"

"First of all, stop yelling. You're scaring it."

"_I'm_ scaring _it_?" Owen hisses. The rabbit twitches its nose again and he stops moving, stops talking, stops breathing- but nothing happens, so he relaxes.

"Gwen and I are on our way, but you've got the SUV, so we'll be a while," Jack is saying. "Try to keep it calm. Talk to it."

"Talk to it? The purple rabbit who tried to barbecue me?" How is this his life?

"It doesn't matter what you say. Just be calm and quiet and try to sound friendly."

Silence follows that, then the sound of muffled laughter.

"Not helping, Gwen," Jack says. A moment later he yells out, as if to someone across the room, "Definitely not helping, Ianto."

"What's teaboy doing?" Owen asks.

"Saying," Tosh corrects, far too quickly. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

Yeah, because that's not remotely suspicious. Owen comforts himself with the thought that, as soon as he gets back to the Hub, there will be one less teaboy in the world.

"Just stay still and don't move," Jack orders. "We'll be there in twenty minutes."

Owen closes his eyes and drops his head back onto the pavement. He hears the scuffing of small paws approaching but stays still, trusting Jack to know his purple fire-starting rabbits.

Something big and heavy lands on his stomach, driving the breath out of him, and he yelps and jerks his head up-

-to find himself eye-to-eye with another rabbit, this one much bigger, nose twitching erratically. Owen slowly looks to his left.

"Ah," he says, watching as the rabbit horde slowly edges forward.

Jack and Gwen find him there some half hour later, covered in a living purple carpet. Owen has nothing kind to say to them, naturally, and feels free to inform them of his opinion of them, their dubious parentage, and this situation as a whole. He repeats the scathing diatribe to Ianto, who withstands it stoically, when he gets back to the Hub. Then he says it to Tosh for good measure. Then he goes home.

The giant purple stuffed rabbit is waiting for him in the autopsy bay the next morning.

He never really manages to live it down.

* * *

><p>2.<p>

_Day thirty-eight-_

_The inmates have moved past restless, through completely batty, and beyond to a level of total mental disconnect most commonly associated with zombies and cult members. They have caught up on paperwork, finished old projects, stocked up on supplies, and completed all other little things that tend to fall by the wayside when one is busy saving the world once a week. They have not, however, learned to clean up after themselves. I have officially declared myself to be absolved of that responsibility, since they certainly have the time to do it themselves. I suppose we'll see who breaks first._

_Have stated my intentions to shoot anyone who dares try to enter the Archives. O thinks I am joking, again. How many times must I shoot him before he realizes I really will do it?_

_G is back from her 'vacation'. Can only assume Rhys is tired of her being there day in and day out. Such continuous exposure to anyone is rarely a good thing, even one's own fiancée._

_T brought in more DVDs for her Hub Theatre. Spotted such titles as _The Sound of Music _and _Titanic_. Suspect we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Note to self: AVOID._

_J has been very quiet. Could be catching up on paperwork, as he is two years behind. Ultimatum seems particularly effective. Am still suspicious, however._

Ianto drops his pen and massages the bridge of his nose. He stretches as best he can, trapped as he is behind a desk intended for a much shorter man, then gets up and wanders upstairs.

The Hub proper is dark. The couch has been turned to face into the autopsy bay, and a large screen produced from somewhere. The children von Trapp are singing on the screen. Owen and the two girls take up the couch, all of them munching on something unidentifiable in the dark but apparently very crunchy.

Jack is leaning in the doorway to his office, watching his team as much as the movie. The light is on in his office, so it's difficult to see his face, but his head turns a little towards Ianto, and he pushes away from the doorframe and disappears back into his office proper.

Ianto picks his way through the Hub, weaving between the often-rearranged workspaces, carefully avoiding the Leaning Tower of Pizza- it's become something of a competition, seeing how high they can get it and who knocks it over. Gwen had needed to stand on a chair the last time to reach the top. It's getting to the point where there is the very real possibility of the words 'pizza box avalanche' appearing on someone's death certificate.

Jack points to a stack of papers when Ianto appears in the doorway.

"Halfway done," he says, so extraordinarily pleased with himself that Ianto swallows the sarcastic comment that wants desperately to come out. He has realized, back during Week One, that his job is much easier when the other four are always swanning in and out as they please. With all five of them cooped up in the Hub, Ianto's patience with them has quickly dwindled down to nothing, and his occasional snide comments have developed a razor-sharp edge and appear with an alarming frequency.

He reaches over to take the completed stack and get it sorted- even with a lull on, even after a full month without so much as a single Weevil spotting, Ianto never has a shortage of things to do- and Jack catches his hand and pulls him in for a long, leisurely kiss. Ianto allows it, even pulls his hand free to wrap his fingers around the back of Jack's neck, but catches the exploring hand trying to untuck his shirt.

"No, Jack," he says, pulling back just enough to speak. "You know the rules."

"No sex until the paperwork's done," Jack recites dutifully. He then tugs Ianto back in for another kiss, hungrier than the last, and Ianto pulls away sooner since one of them needs to retain some small amount of self-control and Jack clearly will not be it.

Ianto steps away, putting distance between them, and Jack shifts and clears his throat.

"Right, back to work," he says, and Ianto waits. And waits. After a long couple of minutes, Jack starts fidgeting under his steady gaze, and he allows himself a small smile.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Am I distracting you?" he asks, almost cheerfully, and Jack glares.

"Out," he orders, pointing helpfully to the door, and Ianto leaves.

The pizza box tower topples the next day. No one is hurt, but it takes ten minutes to find the couch again.

_Last note: Must teach Myfanwy to attack on command._

* * *

><p>3.<p>

It's a very good thing the Hub has its own shower installations, Tosh thinks, because there's no way she's going home like this. She storms in through the open door and turns back, catching Gwen's eye. The Welsh woman mouths another apology as she shuts the door, and Tosh begins the tedious process of taking her clothes off. She's mostly forgiven Gwen. Not so much the other two.

She tries to grab the hem of her shirt, but it slimes out of her grip. She tries to slip her thumbs under the waistband of her jeans- and what a day to wear jeans to work- but they're too snug to slip off.

For a moment, Tosh seriously considers just sitting down and crying. She holds off, mostly because there would be no way she could get back up on her own.

"Tosh?" Gwen calls cautiously through the door. "Ianto's back."

"Let him in, please," Tosh answers immediately, and the door opens just long enough to admit the only teammate she feels like associating with at the moment.

Ianto stops just inside the doorway, turns back and says something to Gwen. A moment later he closes the door and faces her.

"She's gone," he says, and Tosh feels a rush of fondness for the young man. It balances out nicely with the utter humiliation.

"I can't…" she begins, feeling her face heat up, and holds out her hands. They're covered with the same goop as the rest of her, a translucent gel that smells vaguely of strawberries and cedar and reduces friction to almost nothing, making it impossible to get a grip on anything.

Ianto turns on the shower, tests the temperature, then goes back to the bag he's brought in with him and produces a large bottle of red wine. It's probably the cheapest kind the store had. Tosh glances in the bag and sees four more bottles.

"And this will actually work?" she asks. Ianto shrugs.

"Jack thinks so. I left him a bottle already, since he's got it all over his hands."

He'd gotten it on his hands by helping Tosh take her shoes off so she wouldn't slip and crack her head open. Tosh considers it fair punishment, since he hadn't bothered to tell Owen that poking the dead jellyfish-thing was a very bad idea. How Owen, who had actually been in autopsy with the dead thing, had managed to avoid the explosive results, Tosh has no idea. Gwen had avoided it by ducking behind Tosh, an understandable and purely instinctual reaction. Ianto had been making them coffee and so had been well outside the range of the flying gel and thus was the only blameless one.

Ianto looks her over, and she can feel her face heating up again.

"I can't take my clothes off," she says finally, eyes fixed on his shoes. When the others hear about this, she will never hear the end of it.

A noise draws her gaze up, and she finds Ianto in the process of removing his jacket. As she watches, he tosses it casually aside and rolls his sleeves up.

"Go ahead," he says, gesturing to the shower, then turns back to the bag of wine, opening all the bottles so Tosh won't have to fight with them.

The water sluices off a good portion of the gel, and when Ianto pours the wine over her hands she can feel its slick hold on her skin slipping. It takes the whole bottle, but finally her hands are clean.

Ianto looks at the wine on the floor, then at the slimy and sodden Tosh.

"I'll go get some more, then," he offers.

"Thank you, Ianto," she says, honestly grateful. The consummate professional, Ianto offers her a small smile before slipping out. She won't have to worry about him telling the others, she thinks. She's more worried about how he'll react when he realizes he's expected to clean the mess in the Hub.

She undresses one-handed, bottle of wine parked firmly in the left hand, and piles her clothes in a heap near the door. They'll probably be burned, she reflects, and decides it's for the best.

Ianto comes back in at some point. Tosh doesn't know when- the only clue he's been there at all is the second bag of wine, bottles once again all open, and a pile of clean clothes on the nearby bench. She wonders how Torchwood had managed to survive before he came along.

When she's clean and dressed- including a shirt that is either Jack's or Ianto's and does not bear thinking on- she comes back upstairs. The Hub smells of strawberries and red wine, and she watches as Owen takes a long pull at a bottle of wine before swinging it around, pouring it freely over most vertical surfaces in the autopsy bay.

"So," Jack says as he settles in next to her. She glances at his hands, but they're clean. "What have we learned today?"

"Bugger off, Harkness," Owen answers. Then his foot finds a patch of gel and he goes down with a yell and a crash.

It's almost two months before Tosh can drink wine again.

* * *

><p>4.<p>

The SUV lunges forward, slamming the passengers back into their seat, and the waving figure of little old Mrs. Wells disappears before Gwen can peel herself off the upholstery and wave back. She watches as her neighborhood flashes by, Jack driving like he gets extra points for every pedestrian he hits.

"You said it wouldn't have this strong an effect yet," Ianto is saying from the front passenger seat.

"She must have taken a larger dose," Jack says grimly. "Should probably tell Owen to have a sedative ready."

"I thought we had all the intoxicants locked up downstairs."

"We did." Pause. "Do. Still do."

"Jack…" Ianto says warningly, and Gwen blinks. It sounds like they're fighting, or on the verge of it. She leans forward.

"Where're we goin'?" she asks, then frowns a little. Her words came out slurred.

"Back to the Hub," Ianto tells her, the almost-anger in his voice a moment ago gone now.

"Why?" Gwen asks next. She still sounds drunk, although she hasn't had anything to drink today.

"We found you about three seconds from kissing your eighty-two year old neighbor," Jack tells her with a laugh. "Seemed a little unusual. It's just to run some tests. If it's what I think it is, we'll take you right back home, and Rhys will be a very happy man."

Gwen looks at Jack, then Ianto, then back again. She considers it for a moment, but Jack is driving and she's not so far gone she's willing to risk an accident, and there's no room for her besides.

"Don' wanna wait," she tells them, then pushes forward and slides into Ianto's lap.

He sees her coming and manages to catch her. She ends up sitting sideways on his lap. She giggles and tilts her head back, perfectly angled to kiss his neck.

Ianto jumps a little as her teeth graze his skin, then mutters an oath in Welsh- and he really does make it sound so pretty, she has to agree with Jack there- and catches the hand that's trying for his belt buckle. A short struggle ensues, Gwen doing her level best to get both of them naked and Ianto trying to keep them both dressed. Ianto is winning, for a moment at least, until-

"Jack!"

The SUV jerks sharply to the left, swerves a bit as it settles back into its lane. Ianto wraps one arm around Gwen's waist to steady her and braces himself with the other. Gwen takes advantage of the diversion to twist around so she's facing him properly.

"Eyes on the road," Ianto says sternly to Jack, catching Gwen's wrists and holding her hands away. She collapses against him, cheek against his chest, listening to his heart and timing her breaths to match his.

"Sorry," Jack says, sounding anything but. "You two are just a little distracting."

Gwen rolls her hips and Ianto's breath catches. She smiles up at him, then tugs one hand free and pulls him in for a kiss. For a moment he's rigid and unresponsive. Then, with a sigh, he opens his mouth and kisses back.

Then her other hand achieves its goal and slips up under his shirt, sliding up his ribs, fingers cold against his warm skin. He jerks away with another curse and grabs at her arm. She digs her nails in a little, drags them down his side and feels him shudder.

"Light is green, Jack," he says, a touch hoarsely, and the SUV starts rolling forward a moment later.

By the time they reach the Hub, Gwen has almost won their little war. Ianto's waistcoat is gone and his shirt is mostly open, he has a mark on his neck from her teeth, and his eyes are glazed and his breathing harsh. She'll have bruises on her wrists.

She hears the door open, hears some obligatory snide comment from Owen, but she isn't really paying attention. She notices the slight pain in her shoulder and looks over to see the doctor withdrawing a hypodermic.

The sedative takes hold almost immediately. It takes both Jack and Owen to pull her out of the SUV, where she collapses against Owen and smiles incoherently at the world as a whole.

"You got her?" Jack asks, glancing inside the SUV, eyes dark.

"Yeah," Owen grunts, hauling Gwen to her feet and moving over to the door. "Take your time."

The last thing Gwen sees is an unsteady Ianto climbing out of the SUV and turning glazed eyes on Jack, who promptly pushes him back against the vehicle and kisses him, hard.

Then the world goes dark.

She doesn't remember any of it, once the alien aphrodisiac wears off, although Owen naturally is far too happy to tell her everything he saw. She tries to apologize to Ianto, who waves it off.

After that, the intoxicants all stay safely locked away, no matter what sort of idea Jack gets.

* * *

><p>5.<p>

Jack is used to losing: losing battles, losing people, losing everything that matters. It's nothing new, never has been- long before he watched the TARDIS fade away without him, he was general of his own private war that he could never win. Still, it hurts every time, probably always will- he hopes it always will, since it won't bode well for him if it ever stops hurting- and so he's learned to recognize the signs of hidden pain in others.

The year Owen joins them, on the first anniversary of Katie's death, Jack brings in a bottle of scotch and tucks it away in his office. Owen spends the day sulking and snapping and stays late, long after the others have left. Jack watches him for a while, then goes to his office and retrieves the scotch.

"I don't want your pity," Owen spits when he sees it.

"I didn't kill her," Jack says in return. "I wanted to help her. I just got there too late. And it's not pity."

Owen looks at the bottle, up at Jack. "What would you have done for her? If you'd gotten there sooner."

"I don't know," Jack admits. Then he adds, "You shouldn't be alone tonight."

Suzie comes in early the next morning and finds Jack asleep face down on the couch, drooling into the cushions, completely naked. That he has serious issues with keeping his clothes on while drunk comes as a surprise to no one. Owen she finds curled up on the table in the autopsy bay, wearing Jack's shirt and cuddling the empty scotch bottle. They're never quite sure what happened that night, which is kind of the point.

The second year, Owen snaps at him again, then snatches away the proffered bottle and chugs half of it as Jack watches. He throws the remainder wildly across the Hub and they listen to the glass shatter. Jack keeps his distance as Owen sinks to the ground and cries quietly for a good ten minutes. Then Owen pulls himself together and suggests hitting a bar- a real bar, not a pub- and Jack volunteers to drive. He stays sober that year.

The third year Owen is waiting for him. He produces two relatively clean glasses from somewhere, and they manage to behave like reasonable adults this time, mostly because they have to go Weevil hunting before they get to the third glass. They spend a good forty minutes romping through rainy, chilly Cardiff, ending with Owen avoiding getting gutted by about three centimeters.

The fourth year Owen is angry again. Jack doesn't think it's about Katie so much as life in general, and so says nothing while the doctor commandeers the entire bottle for himself and rants about Jack's overall uselessness. When the bottle is empty he collapses on the couch next to Jack and stares at nothing, rolling the bottle between his hands. He falls asleep there, and in his sleep presses his face against Jack's neck.

The fifth year, it's a quiet day, and Jack pulls Gwen back when she tries to leave early. He sits her on the couch next to Ianto, who knows the importance of this date even if he doesn't know the relevance.

He pours out an equal amount of scotch into three glasses and leaves the bottle on the desk in his office- he'll come back for it later, when Gwen is gone and it's just him and Ianto and the memories. It's a bit of a balancing act getting back over to the other two, but he manages without spilling a drop, and he sits down so Gwen is between the two men.

They drink to lost friends, a quiet moment of melancholy. Ianto says nothing, and Jack can tell he's thinking about all the times he and Owen fought, hearing the echo of a gunshot.

Gwen's hands are shaking as she prepares to leave for the second time. Jack leaves Ianto alone for the moment and goes over to her, catching her left hand in both of his.

"Are you sure you'll be…?" she begins, gesturing helplessly around the Hub. It seems much bigger with only three people to occupy it.

"Go," Jack orders gently. He rubs a thumb over her wedding ring. "Be with Rhys. We'll be all right."

She leaves, and Jack goes back to the couch, armed this time with the whole bottle. Ianto is staring at the last few drops of scotch in the bottom of his glass. As Jack approaches, his breath catches on a sob.

Jack sits down next to him, wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in close. He presses his cheek against Ianto's hair and feels hot tears on his neck.

The sixth year, Jack drinks alone.

* * *

><p>6.<p>

"… And now, since you've all been so patient, this week's tally," Owen announces grandly, sounding very much like a game show host. Jack pauses in the middle of toweling off his hair, then pulls the towel down so he can properly see the doctor. From Gwen's snickering, he guesses his hair is sticking up in a manner reminiscent of a wildly offended hedgehog.

Owen is standing in the doorway to Jack's office, most likely because the other four are all on the ground floor and it gives him a sense of stature. Certainly Owen has never had to worry about seeming too tall when he's got Jack and Ianto around as comparison.

He clears his throat and produces a clipboard. Jack slides Ianto a questioning glance and gets a one-shouldered shrug in response.

"This week," Owen tells them solemnly, "we have captured eight Weevils, two Hoix- Hoixes?- and a blowfish. We dealt with ship from Pirates of the Caribbean appearing in Cardiff Bay. We wrangled a seven-legged cat thing."

"We?" Gwen echoes.

"Speaking of which, the left rear door on the SUV no longer latches, there are claw marks on the ceiling, and the passenger's seat is now detachable," Ianto adds. "I say we just get a new one. Preferably without the name of our secret organization written on the side."

"Hush, both of you," Owen snaps. "We tracked down all those mechanical dragonfly things-"

"Again with the 'we'," Jack says.

"Quiet! We dealt with the Invasion of the Lilliputians and the talking fungi." He pauses, blinks at the paper. Then he looks over his audience, a bit hesitantly. "Is that it?"

"You forgot to mention the alien happy juice we were all dosed with," Ianto deadpans.

"Which wore off on all of us, except you, two days ago," Tosh adds. Jack leans against the wall, happy to let his team bicker and banter. He's tired; they all are. More than that, he's proud of them.

"Over the past seven days, between the five of us," Owen continues, flipping to a new page, "we have had a grand total of nine proper meals, eleven call-outs between the hours of ten pm and six am, seven changes of clothes-"

"Eight," Tosh corrects, shooting Jack a quick look.

"-Eight changes of clothes, three hundred forty-two cups of coffee, thirty-two hours of sleep, one totaled SUV, one arrest-"

"Still not my fault," Jack says quickly.

"-And absolutely no casualties," Owen finishes.

"Excuse me?" Jack demands.

"You don't count." He chucks the clipboard over his shoulder and moves forward, leans against the railing. "I'll tell you what- we're good."

Jack laughs, because he agrees and because it feels good. He's clean for the first time in two days- Owen's 'seven-legged cat thing' had knocked both Jack and Gwen into Cardiff's biggest mud puddle, and the pirate ship appearing in the bay had interfered with any chance to take a shower until now- and they've had their first six consecutive hours of no alien drama in a week, and he just wants to grab Ianto and curl up in bed and sleep the rest of the day away.

Assuming he hasn't blown any chance of that by accidently getting Ianto arrested, of course.

"Go home," he says to them. "All of you. Go get some sleep and something to eat, and don't come in tomorrow. I'll call you if I need you."

The two girls make good their escape. Jack watches as Owen ambles after them. He's a little concerned that the overzealous antidepressant hasn't yet worn off, but then Owen probably needs it more than any of the rest of them, and the tests all show it's not hurting him in any way.

"I'll make sure he gets home," Ianto says, also watching the doctor.

"And stays there," Jack adds as Ianto moves off.

He returns almost an hour later, probably after stopping off at home for a shower and change of clothes. Jack checks, just to make sure it is him, then gets back in bed. A few minutes later Ianto slides in next to him, tangling their legs together comfortably and resting his head on Jack's shoulder.

Maybe later, when they've had a few hours of sleep, Jack might be getting ideas. For now, he just moves around a bit to accommodate the younger man.

"You owe me a new SUV," Ianto says after a bit, and Jack smiles into the dark.

"We'll see," he says, even though he can't really argue, what with the condition the cat thing had left it in.

"He's right, you know," Ianto continues. "We are good."

"And everybody lives," Jack finishes softly.

Tomorrow will get here soon enough. For now, he's happy with today.


End file.
